Step of Two
by Espresso Yourself
Summary: When successful accountant Rei Ryugazaki loses the use of his legs, he decides to finish his life with ballet, though the unexpected performance turns out to be its start. TW: Mild suicidal thoughts and referenced depression. Ballet AU. 2/3 chapters.
1. Corps de Ballet

**A/N:** Taking a break from Crossroads for this quick, 3-chapter AU. I've always loved Tchaikovsky, the composer of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty. I've known the music all my life, but I only saw my first ballet recently (a rendition of The Nutcracker, of course). I decided to write a quick ballet AU story. There will only be three chapters. "Step of Two" is the literal translation of a dance that's common in ballets, called a "pas de deux".

**Chapter One:** Corps de Ballet

Rei fell in love with the ballet three years ago.

Three years and four months ago, he was a moderately successful accountant working in uptown New York for upscale clients living high class lifestyles, strolling from his office to the nearest subway stop. As a confident young man of twenty-seven or so, he was not paying attention to the now, but had his focus on the future. His clients' money and by extension his own was the horizon before him, so he did not notice the drunk driver coming toward him at break-back speed.

Three years and two months ago, Rei Ryugazaki awoke from a coma, paralyzed from the waist down.

The next sixty days were spent in a haze of readjusting to civilian life, but he'd lost his job from inactivity. Who would want a cripple for a coworker, after all? All of his money had been drained by hospital care and nursing and he hadn't any source of income. Here, at the end of his life, what was he to do? Go on living? Most certainly not. In a snap decision, he drained his funds to purchase tickets to the ballet - he didn't care which, he didn't care when, all the former accountant needed were those last images as a sign of his worthlessness to society.

And so, three years ago to the day, he attended his first viewing of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, going to die and leaving to live.

As he spent all but a fraction of his measly fortune, he had a stunning seat front and center, close enough to the stage that he could feel each dancer's sweat like hot rain upon his forehead. Throughout the first act, the night went very much according to plan: the graceful movements, the potency in every step they took before the fallen man, and the passion blinding them to their audience had his heart thoroughly destroyed.

The second act began by sickening him. The stage was dolled out in pretty sweets and decorated in frosted clouds to the extent that its false, powdery set made him want to puke out his sadness. What an artificial set-up, used to encourage dreams of a wonderland. Life was not that beautiful.

The stiff dancers entered on a mechanical cue, their starchy slippers thumping noisily in front of Rei. "Ha, ha, ha!" each step sang cynically, smirks pinned to the made-up faces of everyone before him.

In actuality, he did not see the moment, but rather heard it - the false laughter of those shoes were in a moment interrupted by the slap of skin upon the dark floor, looming before as a gaping black hole, a yawn in the ground to swallow them all. Rei glanced up and saw there at the mouth a young dancer, hair hidden by a ribboned cap, dressed in pastel to match a set of pretty rosegold eyes. The dancer had fallen. Distantly, the accountant realized that this must have been one of the marzipan shepherdesses - not the primary one, certainly - and he felt pity for the young thing before him for but a minute. A moment later, that sweet face incited his tears as with powerful arms the dancer pushed himself away, floating back to the background and away from the man's view.

He did not know why it made him cry, but as the shepherdess vanished from his sight, he could not stop saline tears from falling down. Even as the story progressed, they did not stop, and his thoughts never strayed from that dancer. Among the crowd, he could not pick him out, desperately though he tried. Was he all right? Would he lose all he had worked for? Of course, for that was how it went in the world of dance, wasn't it?

After the curtains collapsed upon the stage and the masses had passed him by, Rei wheeled himself to the edge of the black arena, gently calling for someone. He was answered by a disgruntled stagehand.

"What?" the woman snapped irritably.

"The dancer that fell," Rei pleaded, "is she all right?" Her look transitioned to slightly incredulous - she didn't believe anyone would truly care that much. His red glasses made bloodshot eyes stand out.

"Nagisa?" she repeated dumbfoundedly. "He's okay, sounds like another dancer pushed him." She asked him something else, but the man's aching heart was relieved and his damaged mind was calculating how much he would need to save to see another performance. Nagisa. What a beautiful name for a dancer that lived on.

In the next six months, he was unable to return to the theater to watch them dance again, though that was the thought that fueled him. He set up his own business as a private investor, garnering a host of wealthy clients that had previously been his since his tragedy and moved by that very story. He worked from home, mostly, having moved to a brownstone-styled, single-storey house close enough to the heart of the city. Stood upon his desk was a framed picture of the poster from the show that he'd seen, his ticket safely tucked into the front of glass with it. He kept the program as well, having found the dancer's name and circled it. Nagisa Hazuki. No matter what, Rei had promised himself, the next ballet he watched would have him in it.

That aside, despite his business' modest success, he was unable to attend another performance until August, and even then, it was more due to his blooming partnership with a brilliant young economist, Haruka Nanase. His views (and luck, perhaps) were unparalleled, but he hardly had the way with people like Rei did. Despite their mutual introversion, however, they became friends to the point where the bespectacled man did not feel shy in inviting him to the next performance. One evening, finally having scraped together nearly $100 for personal use, he called the man on his cellphone.

"Hello, Haruka?" he asked into the phone, staring at his computer screen where the ticket information was available on their summer "Firebird". It did not list the role of the dancers, but after an email to the company, he discovered that the young dancer was in fact cast.

"What?" came the muffled, disgruntled reply. Friendly though the two were with one another, he certainly could come off harsh.

"I was going to buy tickets to a ballet next month, if you'd care to join me," the older man offered, marking the date in his calendar.

"No," Haruka stated simply, hanging up and proceeding to do whatever it was he liked best. And so, once the month was up and July became late August, he dressed himself up in the better clothes he owned (though at this rate, it was still business casual - how embarrassing!) for the opening night of the Russian ballet. As soon as he collected his ticket and rolled into the lobby of the theater, he desperately tore through the program, searching for the dancer's name. 'Nagisa Hazuki' rang through his head as he examined each role.

At last, he found the boy's in a rather unexpected section - "Thirteen Princesses" was the header over his and many other names. He did mistake the young man for a woman at first, he supposed. It wasn't until the stagehand said otherwise that he'd noticed. Well, regardless, it wasn't as though he knew much about the story, but princesses normally were a feature role, weren't they? The warm glow of pride lit his heart however much he told himself the sentiment was quite inappropriate. He couldn't help it though - what a way to show them that he couldn't be kept down after being scornfully pushed aside!

So he thought, at the least. The night began diverging from his plan beginning with his seat. Due to the stairs in the theater, he found he couldn't even get to it. Bad enough that he would have been all the way in the back of the balcony with barely any view, but he couldn't even get there! When he addressed the problem with the theater, they haphazardly shoved him somewhere on the first floor in the middle of an aisle. What between moving for irritated audience members finding their seats and his conveniently dysfunctional brake, he was completely irate as the curtains rose.

They opened upon a man that was evidently hunting. Eventually he caught a woman in his arms - apparently the title role - and they spent a long while struggling until she tossed a feather at him and left. He couldn't quite understand the intricacies of the story, but once the intermission came, he read that the prince had caught a firebird and, as a bargain for her freedom, she had given him a feather for him to call her when she was needed. There was yet to be any mention of a princess. Or thirteen of them for that matter.

It was in the second act, after the prince was transported to a magical world, that the princesses were featured in a dance. From his vantage point, tangled in between seats and far from the front of the stage, he barely made out rosy eyes - he was the fourth one out and, it appeared, the shortest of the women on stage. Immediately, his tension melted away to the point that he actually released his chair and rolled forward far enough to tap the group in the chairs in front of him. Oh, how beautifully synchronized he was with the rest of the dancers on stage! What a vision he was of success, of triumph!

Every time the young dancer came on stage, a little bit of Rei's reservations about his own life broke away, though his appearances were few and far between. He wasn't even the princess that the prince fell in love with at the end. Again, the accountant remained in his seat until the last audience member had cleared out and the stagehands came to clean. He wanted to ask after the dancer, but he simply couldn't - not even when the woman from his first ballet glanced curiously his way. He left shortly thereafter.

Rei Ryugazaki spent his next four months incredibly focused on his work as he and Haruka allowed their business to expand all over the city. Seeing his dancer successful on stage, even after so bad and humiliating a fall had fueled his desire to succeed, despite his disability. Besides, he rationed, his intellectual abilities weren't at all limited and firing him the loss of his previous employers in the end!

As their clientele increased with word getting out, the accountant was able to store more and more of his money away for attending the ballet, so much so that the time it took between his attendances had been halved! He had missed a few concertos and the first performance of Cinderella, but when next he could go, it was to see the Nutcracker once more, in the dawn of December.

Two years to the day, Rei fell in love with ballet.


	2. Variation

**Chapter Two:** Variation

When he next attended the Nutcracker, Rei was by far better dressed in black trousers, a white button down, and a jacket. He had gotten a relatively better seat as well, having reserved it well over a month in advance (though no promises could be made for his wheelchair). His hair was combed down and neatly parted and his glasses had recently been replaced with fashionably red frames due to a happy accident - he'd been meaning to anyhow.

Oddly (at least according to his experiences), before the lights went down to signal the beginning of the ballet, a tall brunet man walked on stage, raising his strong arms for silence.

"Welcome," he said graciously, his voice gentle despite its loud volume to reach the corners of the theater, "to the opening night of The Nutcracker. I am the artistic director of this production, Makoto Tachibana. I am pleased to announce that our very Gou Matsuoka, is making her debut as a primary dancer tonight in the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Additionally, our Arabian Dancer, Nagisa Hazuki, is dancing his first role as a soloist. If we may, a round of applause for these two most accomplished dancers!" Hands thundered throughout the room, but no sound was sweeter than the ring of the young man's name in room - a _soloist! _He hadn't any idea of the implications, but Rei was most certain that he deserved it. "Please, enjoy everyone's dancing," the director continued, "and above all, enjoy this holiday classic!" Well, as far as speeches went, the accountant supposed his got to the point. It was effective, at least, and he was sure this Makoto was hired for his visionary skills rather than his speaking ones.

At last, as the artistic director made his way off stage, the lights dimmed and the curtains rose, taking away with them his breath. When last he came, he hadn't paid any heed to the story, the setting, or the dancers - he only listened to his self-pity. But tonight, the stage glowed with the warmth of a hearth as the scene opened upon a family party in the 19th century, with a magnificent Christmas tree in the center. Young children pranced about the stage, the girls dancing with the fathers and the boys dancing with the mothers. They were only interrupted the appearance of a mysterious figure - in the program, he was referred to as Uncle Drosselmeier. The man greeted each of the children, but chose one little girl to bestow upon the gift of a beautiful nutcracker. In a rage, her brother broke it, eliciting a sharp ache in Rei's heart, but the uncle gave him a sling. Eventually, the families made their exits, leaving the young girl, Clara, to fall asleep holding her nutcracker upon the sofa.

The next events came as quite a surprise to Rei - he certainly had not been paying attention last time! As she slept, an owl on a grandfather clock began to glow and the tree on the stage began to grow, reaching almost twice its original height. The girl was carted offstage and presented again upon a bed, though the scenery had changed from the warm home to a chilly, snowy night. A life-sized nutcracker fought and defeated a mouse king, only with the help of Clara's slipper, and before he knew it, the curtains fell to signal the end of the first act.

Why, Rei thought as intermission began, his dancer hadn't been there at all! And, as he reviewed the program, most of the plot had been finished already. All that was left was for the nutcracker to take Clara to the Sugar Plum Fairy's court and recount her bravery in saving him by tossing her shoe at the king's whiskery face.

When the intermission was finished, the accountant was still feeling rather miffed at the entire situation. He didn't see Nagisa Hazuki as a soloist among a group of dancers dressed like snowflakes, nor was he in the following change of scenery at the fairy's court as the nutcracker arrived with Clara. He was temporarily distracted by the Sugar Plum Fairy - her hair was red like cherries and her cheeks were high pink to match her sweet surroundings - but even that proved little solace. She beckoned forth her court, beginning with a mimicry of Spanish dancing called 'chocolate' and followed by Chinese 'tea'. This was of course followed by another food dish, some ridiculous 'coffee', according to the program -

_Oh, _he thought, as the cheery Chinese dance faded and the lights dimmed to red and gold, _Arabian coffee. _

A solitary dancer, draped in an opulent veil with pants clinging to his hips, slithered into the hot, yellow spotlight. On either side, the legs were torn and kept to the ankle by gold bracelets, and instead of a shirt he wore a feminine wrap around his chest. Rei could barely hear the mezzo piano music of the orchestra for the rhythm of his own heart, but the beat was kept by a clear, high chime from the young man's fingers as he tapped cymbals together with his fingers.

The dancer's body bent like a mirage to the spin of the clarinet and as the violins fluttered, his eyelashes would shiver around his rose-gold irises. He would sometimes land in a split, striking his brassy cymbals, and glance behind his bare shoulder to meet the audience with an unbroken, passionate gaze. His dance was quite unlike the others, Rei noted, full of exoticism, and, he noted as his eyes met the soloist's plush lips with a chime, lust.

It was an all too short four minutes before the sultry dance finished, transitioning to what the accountant recognized as the marzipan shepherdesses - the one in which his dancer had fallen - and from there to the waltz of the flowers and the final numbers. He was impressed with the pas de deux of the Sugar Plum Fairy, as well - Ms. Matsuoka was a skilled woman - but nothing could touch the elegance of the coffee dance.

As the ballet finished, Rei was pinned in place, trembling in awe of that sensuous dance, so much that he did not notice when everyone had left and a stagehand familiar to him shooed him off. When he closed his eyes, the luxurious image burned through his imagination and he reckoned the very word 'coffee' would never again be without its connotation.

For the next few weeks, Haruka heard nothing but the story of that dance. He never told Rei to stop, and the man reckoned that his younger partner treated it like white noise for concentration - whatever suited him, he supposed. He had purchased a small poster of the ballet, as a keepsake, that featured the Sugar Plum Fairy's Pas de Deux and the Arabian Dancer's solo - a token for his motivation, he rationalized.

Around this time, his local fame as a successful, independent investor had increased in leaps and bounds. He saw new, wealthy clients nearly every week at his rate and was able to hire an assistant, Nitori Aiichiro. He was young, fresh out of graduate school, and much as Rei had been prior to his accident (though perhaps a tad more self-aware).

One day, he asked of his employer in a quick breath, "Why do you keep so many things from ballets?" He was hesitant, and the shifting papers in his hands made the sound of a gentle breeze. His eyes fluttered around nervously, examining a ticket protected in a glass frame, and others pinned to the wall in a stripe beside his most recent acquisition. Even his young eyes perched gently upon the golden Arabian Dancer, peering quizzically through his downy bangs.

Rei took awhile to think, returning as far back as his salty tears in the sweet performance, where for a moment a shepherdess had fallen in front of a broken-hearted man. And yet in a fluid motion, he had twirled away from the gaping hole of failure like a hummingbird from a raindrop. And so, the older man told him, "Because he stood after falling when I could not."

In that moment, Rei had not seen the delicate dancer, but had peered into a heart as hard and precious as diamond and, like the boy before him, he was unwilling to surrender himself to fate. This was why he had kept on. This was why his heart, though soft and malleable as gold, still could beat, carrying the warmth of his blood throughout his entire body. He purchased his next ticket then for a production of Don Quixote to occur in four months.

He busied himself those next several weeks by moving their business into a rented office space, shared with similar departments. As soon as they saw the practically prodigious Rei, they had been keen on joining him in fact, but they had planned their discussions for April. A most unfortunate event, for he was out to see his next show (they, like the youthful Nitori, had wondered why on earth his office was decorated in pictures of such odd things without a hint of family at all).

On the day of the April ballet, he notified his customers that he would take that Friday off and to direct their calls to Nitori or Haruka. His older customers, previously having known him as a spry, forward young man asked why, and he told them in kind that it was time for him to see his next dance.

The story was somewhat sillier than those he was accustomed to watching and was about a man who thought himself a knight and his donkey-bound servant. The investor felt great deals of sympathy for him, he supposed - the primary dancer as Don Quixote chased an unreachable beauty, Dulcinea, deluded completely by his dreams of chivalry.

Nagisa Hazuki was listed in the program only as a Spanish dancer - it was a position that lacked glamour, from the sound of it, but Rei was excited nonetheless, for the beauty he would bring to it. His mind's eye played waves of red and yellow lights and a sultry tone and he established that he was most certainly eager to see something of that variation again.

In the second act, he was most shocked to find that this was not the case by any means. His dancer emerged in a court, dressed in a stiff, crimson leotard with classical decorations and a wide skirt. There was a graceful introduction of harp, to which he snapped out a fan, but it changed to charming plucks of the strings and spiking hums of the woodwinds. To this, the blond soloist charmingly pranced in little leaps, practically playing with a smile on his face. Here and there, he made grand running steps, shaking his fan open and closed to his every whim and fancy. He could not have been out there much longer than a minute, but the innocent display left Rei's cheeks pink with a trembling lip. How sweet it had been! And how unexpected!

The ballet later ended with the crazed Quixote's defeat and the promise not to unsheathe his sword for a year. He had only dreamed of dear Dulcinea, but he had been left without, and as he sat alone in the theater as the stagehands cleaned, poor Rei wondered when his pity had become a sad sense of empathy. The black stage loomed tall above his orchestral seat. Yes, she had been beautiful, hadn't she? That faraway star, the one Quixote swore was the moon itself.

He reserved tickets for the August performance of Cinderella not long later, before the cast had even been announced. He assumed the primary dancer, Gou Matsuoka, would be in it and he had found he'd rather enjoyed her as well, though she wasn't his star. In Don Quixote, she had been both Kitri and Dulcinea and he found her rather magnificent. As far as Nagisa went, he could simply hope day and night that he would see him once more - but he supposed a soloist was also often featured.

In these months, his company grew exponentially with the addition of their somewhat struggling companions that had shared their space. Statewide, he, Haruka, and Nitori were known for their teamwork and they soon added more partners - the particular acquisition being two energetic brothers by the name of Mikoshiba. They were placed in charge of what had initially been Rei's job - working with customers - as the brunet found himself promoted to CEO of their company, but of course they were not in business long before his rags-to-riches story attracted the attention of news outlets in the state. Well, Rei could not himself say he fancied being put on display, but the support was worth it, he learned. He received letters and emails after interviews, often from disabled people or their families, expressing gratification, and he felt at least that he had done some levels of good if others were inspired by him as he was by his dancer. To his chagrin, Haruka told the story in an interview once (the older man could've sworn he hadn't been paying attention in those early days) and likened the CEO's story to the upcoming ballet of Cinderella he would be attending (well, at least the dancer's name hadn't been mentioned, but what nerve!).

When he arrived one hot August evening, a large handful of people greeted him, informing him that they'd seen the interview themselves. Some even said they had decided to watch ballet because of his apparent passion for it! But, if it helped the ballet company, he supposed he did not mind. The performance was entirely sold-out and had sold quicker than both opening and closing nights, Makoto had announced at the beginning after introducing a new soloist, a young Ran Tachibana. He was temporarily concerned - was his dancer replaced after the humiliation of the story? Did the company want someone without a black mark on his record?

But his fear was unwarranted. In an unusual take for the story, but common in the ballet, after the godmother's appearance were four more fairies - one for each season. First was the spring fairy, played by the newest soloist, but it was the next that took his breath away.

Nagisa as the summer fairy was slow and delicate, gliding along in perfect sashays like a breeze interrupting the still air. He did not leap like the Spanish dancer, nor bend and break like the Arabian. With each movement he made, his long skirt would stay a moment after, like dust suspended in the sun, and his face was sleepy and gentle like dappled light. After his performance, Rei clapped the loudest, his sounds thunder rolling over the warm performance.

Over the months, the investor spent his funds on cheaper, more intermittent ballets, often more modern productions or collections of solos or pieces to perform. His time was otherwise consumed by work and even these shorter ones began to dig into his busy schedule. It had become such a problem that by December, he had been unable to reserve himself a ticket to the season's most popular ballet and his first, The Nutcracker, though how hard he tried to keep it for his birthday!

One night while examining the website online, he discovered that his dancer this time had been cast in a much longer role, the soloist for Waltz of the Flowers, and his heart shuddered and shrank like a leaf in fall. How he would have loved to see it and how it hurt him that he couldn't! But, when later examining photos, he imagined it might have been for the best. He could not unsheathe his sword and no matter how he cried, the moon could not hear him.

One year to the day, even in pain, Rei loved the ballet.


End file.
